Free, public lecture is May 3 at National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Michael L. Lomax, Ph.D., president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), will give the 2018 Distinguished Phi Beta Kappa Lecture on Thursday, May 3, at 6:30 p.m. in the Glenn Room and Glenn Foyer at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Lomax’s lecture, “New Challenges for the Old South: Some Things That Black and White Folks Need to Know,” is free and open to the public. His lecture is expected to shine a light on the underlying causes of racial divisions in U.S. life, including the turmoil raging over public symbols of the Confederacy.

Joining Lomax as a lecture respondent and moderator of a discussion involving the audience, will be Kali-Ahset Amen, Ph.D., assistant director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Amen is a prominent scholar and spokesperson on American and transnational issues of race as applied to economic justice, public health, migration, and education.

Lomax is a 1968 graduate of Morehouse College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was a senior at Morehouse when he learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and resolved to devote his life to honoring the legacy of the civil rights leader by becoming a drum major for justice. Since then, he has worked as a scholar, teacher, and philanthropist.

After graduating from Morehouse, Lomax earned his master’s degree in English from Columbia University, and a doctorate in American and Afro-American Literature from Emory University. While working on his doctorate, Lomax taught at Morehouse and Spelman College, and served as chairman of the Fulton County Commission—the first African American elected to that post. His efforts on that commission were instrumental in establishing the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta.

During his tenure with the United Negro College Fund—the nation¹s largest granter of scholarships and educational support to African Americans across the country—Lomax has enabled UNCF to raise more than $2.5 billion, helping some 92,000 African American students to earn degrees.

Lomax is also the former president of Dillard University in New Orleans, and senior vice president and divisional manager of Woodforest National Bank Inc.

Thursday’s Lecture is presented by the Metropolitan Atlanta Alumni Association of Phi Beta Kappa in association with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, located at 100 Ivan Allen Jr. Blvd, N.W., Atlanta, Ga., 30313.

To make a reservation, visit: https://www.civilandhumanrights.org/event/new-challenges-for-the-old-south-a-conversation-with-dr-michael-lomax/

For more information, call 678-999-8990 or contact Kelli C. Edwards, programs manager at the Center for Civil and Human Rights, at 404-835-9283.